


Close

by beaubete



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:17:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes to a dark so solid that it rests on his eyelashes like snowflakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flantastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flantastic/gifts).



> Written for my wonderful [iambid](iambid.tumblr.com) as part of the [00Q New Year Party](http://00qnewyearparty.tumblr.com/) Halloween/SPECTRE exchange! Her prompt:
> 
> Bond and Q get stuck in a lift. Surprisingly, Bond is the one that freaks out.
> 
> \+ a recent mishap on mission is the cause of Bond's OOC behaviour  
> \+ Q is amused at first but...  
> \+ it's down to him to calm Bond down (smut optional)  
> \+ Tanner is brilliant (helping from either inside or outside the lift via comms)
> 
> I wasn't able to fit smut or really any Tanner at all, sorry, but I hope you like it anyway, my dear!

Fear tastes like iron, like blood, at the back of his throat.  Failed.  He’s failed.  The shock of icy water in his face is more than expected.  Overhead, the heavy metal grate slams shut, and he’s left in the dark again.

::

“I honestly think you destroy them just to vex me by this point, Double-oh Seven.  Do you know I have a line item just for you in my budget?  ‘Double-oh Seven: eighty thousand per annum, or twenty per mission.’  You’re not budgeted for more than four per year; my department just can’t afford it.”  Q’s shuffling his heavy presentation portfolio in his arms as he gripes, and he graciously lets Bond take it from him before he can drop it.

“So you’re thinking about me all year round, then, Q?” Bond asks.  He’s already thumbing through the thick, creamy pages; Q doesn’t do things by halves—the book is elegant, well-presented.  “You could cut your stationery budget and afford another gun replacement, I’m sure.”

“But the point is that I shouldn’t have to afford another gun replacement, Bond.  Most of the others make do with one, perhaps two weapons a year.  They’re not made of tissue, man, and they’re certainly not meant to be discarded as such.”  Q’s voice is absently peevish.  Truth be told, he sounds a bit exhausted; the bickering over funds must have drawn much later than expected, and Bond himself is only freshly back from a support mission—one that Q must have overseen personally, likely in Rogers’s ear instead of Bond’s; support doesn’t need guidance, after all.  If Q’s had more than ten hours’ sleep this week, he’ll eat his hat.  It’s only Thursday, and Q looks like a wet weekend.

“You could cut the department’s tea funds,” Bond suggests, just to see him perk up, but even annoyed Q just shakes his head and purses his lips.

“Blasphemy.”

“Use Sky instead?  I hear you get the first year free.”

“I will castrate you and save the prophylactics budget.”

“Not the whole thing, surely?”

“A good three quarters,” Q assures him, grinning.  “No, four missions per year.  I thought I might tell you—you’d rather hear it from me—but Mallory’s going to call you into his office tomorrow morning.  He was the author of that particular clause; I’d suggested a budget for six.  I thought you might want,” Bond watches Q’s adam’s apple bob as he swallows hard, “slowing down.  A bit.  You normally average eight to ten, anyway, in years when—I mean.”

“Years I don’t die, you mean,” Bond finishes for him.  There’s a band of heat stretched from temple to temple for a moment, but it cools when he thinks about it—honestly thinks about it.  He’s getting old, can’t even temper that with a gentle “older”, just old.  Fifty isn’t far off—with Q’s suggestion, it’s a mere eighteen missions away; from Mallory’s, a scanty twelve.  He’s snuck past the age for mandatory retirement as the guard changed and everyone was busy looking elsewhere.  His bones hurt—they hurt more, now, and he thinks longingly to the bottle of scotch tucked away in his desk drawer.  “Does your average include this year, considering—?”

Considering his four month holiday, he means, and the two month recovery time in which his eyes had relearned to process light, his ears to detect the tones of human speech again.  Q flinches as though he’s been slapped, and Bond can only feel a little bad for it.  “No,” Q says.  “It didn’t come up.”

“You’re lying.”

It’s sweet of Q to try to protect him, to shelter his—“No.  To be honest, I wrote up my presentation months ago, under the presumption that you’d died.  For real that time.”  Q’s blunt answer knocks Bond for six, leaves him reeling.  “I’ve been scrambling to rewrite my proposed budget since you were declared fit for duty again—I knew I’d need it.”

“Fit for light duty,” Bond says, and yes, it’s bitter.  Bodyguard duty, mainly, shuttling papers between diplomats or acting as backup in the types of missions he’d usually handled alone.  He hasn’t even had the privilege of Q in his ear lately; he hasn’t needed it, hasn’t earned it back yet.  

“Consider it an extended working lunch, then,” Q tells him, and Bond frowns.

“I consider it a bloody waste of my time.”  His voice is sharp even in his own ears, and Q spears him with a pointed glance.

“Then retire.  We all know you’re old enough.  You let yourself be phased out slowly because you hope you won’t return from one of them, I think.”

It’s not meant cruelly.  Q’s not trying to be mean, but Bond’s still tempted to punch him, and Q doesn’t even notice he’s stopped until the irritation and hurt are an angry snarl inside Bond’s chest.  The damnedest thing is that he’s right—Q’s damnably right—and he’d never thought it was visible from the outside.  “Yes.”  What else can he say?  Q casts him a sideways glance, slow and opaque and lingering.

“Well, do save the suicidal tendencies for tomorrow, at least, Double-oh Seven.  It’s been a hell of a day and I’m pantsed.  You can walk me down to my car, if you like, and I’ll go sleep it off.  I could sleep for a week at this point.”

It’s cool relief that no, they’re not going to talk about it, and Bond grins, back on steady ground.  “Will they even let you?  Mr Big, Important Q-Branch Director?”

“No,” Q says gustily.  He’s nearly pouting, the expression playful and beaten at the same time.  “I’m to be back at oh-eight-hundred for another mission—Double-oh Ten in Nicaragua, which isn’t going to be nearly as fun as it is to say.  Nicaragua.”  Bond can feel the fond expression curling on his lips.

“You’re like a kid who hasn’t had his nap.  C’mon, then, and let’s get you home.”

The underside of Q’s arm is warm against his fingertips, and Bond is struck by the instinct to guide him with a palm in the small of his back; Q wouldn’t appreciate it, for all he pings Bond’s protective tendencies like a lamb to a dog.  He wants to coax but settles for guiding, steering him gently in the direction of the lifts.  Q looks staggeringly exhausted though he doesn’t stumble into the narrow carriage.  The lifts at MI6 are old, haven’t been updated since the building was built in ‘94, the Thatcher-approved design lush but stingy.  His shoulder brushes Q’s in the small space.  

The lift rouses itself with a tired whir, and Q’s annoyed sigh shakes Bond from where he is staring down his own reflection in the mirrored brass.  Someone’s pressed every button to every floor that’s accessible by a level three clearance; they’ll skip the ninth and fourth floors, but this lift isn’t in the locked sections of levels eight through three, so they’ve got...twelve stops.  Bond groans and Q laughs quietly.

“I swear to god, this is the kind of day I’ve had.  I’m reviewing the security footage when I come in tomorrow, and when I find the guy who did—”  Q’s words are cut off by a grinding squeal.  The carriage dips beneath them just hard enough that it knocks Q from his feet and he staggers, the warmth of him brushing Bond’s side from thigh to shoulder before he pulls back to stare in horror at the panel; overhead, the lift’s lights flicker.

They go out.

“Oh, Christ,” Q mutters.  “Don’t tell me—no, no, no.  Don’t you—”

Bond swallows.  The buttons are still illuminated, red rings and numbers lit and glinting off the lenses of Q’s glasses as he peers at the panel.  They’re stopped, and somewhere above them, ominously, the whirring goes quiet.  Bond frowns.  “Q—?”

“Not now, Bond,” Q says.  And he does sound terribly busy, but.  Bond curls his fingers into a fist.  Q presses each button—they click loudly in the eerie silence as he does, as if pressing them will remind the lift that it still has passengers, that it was going someplace.  When he’s pressed enough that he’s had to have pressed each twice, Bond turns to watch.

Q starts the rounds again, carefully pressing.  “Because the first three times you pressed didn’t work?” Bond asks.  He can’t see Q’s face, but he can read the irritation in the vague outline of his shoulders.

“I don’t see you helping, Bond.  Did you have an idea—one that doesn’t involve shooting it?”  Q’s eye roll is almost audible.  “I’d like to be home tonight, Double-oh Seven.”

Bond laughs dryly.  “Do you not enjoy my company, Q?”

“I’m after spending a night with my pillow, to be honest.  We have an exclusive relationship, though sometimes it’s a long distance one.”

“Must be hell washing your bedsheets,” Bond says and Q’s little puff of laughter is almost as good as light.  “How long do you think we’re in here?”

Q makes a thoughtful sound, humming between his teeth.  “Depends on why the lift is down.  If the lift is broken, we’ve got a few hours until the morning crew comes in and finds us.  If the power’s out, we’ve got a slightly bigger problem.  Hours, at least.”

It’s the wrong answer.  Breath catches in Bond’s chest hot and sticking, and it takes both hands to wrestle it back down before he can begin panting.  “Hours?” he asks, wincing at the tremble in his own voice.  It sounds thin, winded.  Q’s shadow turns to him, and he imagines the expression on his face, but there’s nothing there.

“At least,” is Q’s breezy response.  “Hope you used the toilet earlier; this thing’s too small to have a peeing corner.”

And.  And it is, it is too small; it’s a coffin hanging upright, a cage, a hole where he’ll be left to be forgotten.  Bond’s elbow connects hard with the brass rail around the edges of the close walls, but when he jerks away he’s touching Q.  Pulling back from Q, he taps the wall with the tip of his shoe, and when he works his way into the corner and reaches his arm ahead, he can feel the ghost of the opposite wall just ahead of his outstretched fingers.  The air trapped in his chest expands, choking him.

It’s Q slapping at his arm that brings him back to the surface; mortified, he tucks his arms in tight, fingers curling again.  There’s nothing to fight, no one to fight aside from Q scolding him.  “—shaking the whole lift.  These things are over twenty years old; we could plummet to our dea—er.  You’re not,” Q says, voice pale and watery with pretended understanding, “Do heights bother you?  Because I’m sure we’re fine.  We’re fine.  We’ll be fine.”

“No,” Bond says.  “Heights don’t bother me.”  They don’t.  He’s hung from the outside of lifts taller than this one before, leapt from planes with no security that the thin nylon parachute strapped to his back would work, peered over the edge of a skyrise to watch a man drop to his death and seen his skull shatter like an egg.  It’s not heights that bother, it’s the phantom feeling of stone pressing in on him, the chill of winter in an oubliette spent wondering if today would finally be the day his toes curled and froze and fell off.  It’s the memory of light so distant and thin that it’s no longer hope but mockery.  He knows where he is.  He knows—he’s in a tiny lift at MI6; he’s in England; he’s home—but it doesn’t still the rabbit beat of his heart, doesn’t dull the gnawing teeth of fear on his guts.

“Good!  So stop shaking the lift so I can concentrate, because I must say the one-man mosh pit is a thing that has not caught on anywhere, ever.  Especially inside a lift with someone who’s currently focused on getting out of said lift.”

He’s lucky Q doesn’t sound quite peevish yet, but he sounds as if he might become so soon, and really, there’s nothing for him to do about it.  Bond settles on the floor; there’s barely room to sit with his legs crossed, but from this angle the light reflected on Q’s face is closer than the dark space above his head.  He finds it soothing to watch Q work.  Distracting.  In the half light of Q’s mobile, he watches Q carefully crack open the panel of controls, but whatever he finds there isn’t promising.  Q sits back on his heels.  The mobile’s light goes out.

“No luck?” Bond asks.

Even though he can feel Q shaking his head, Q still says, “No,” and Bond is thankful.  At least he’s not alone this time—at least he’s not alone.  Q continues, voice brisk and only vaguely inconvenienced: “I should preserve the battery, I think.  It’ll be some time.”

“Signal?” Bond asks.  He doesn’t dare to hope, and Q shakes his head again.  Bond tries not to slump.  “Damn.”

“Indeed,” Q says.  The carriage shakes a bit as he settles, and it must be just as uncomfortable for him as it is for Bond boxed in by close walls; Q’s knee brushes Bond’s thigh and he’d recoil, but there’s nowhere to go.  He’s touching three of the four walls just as Q must be, and they’ll just have to get used to the closeness.

And then there’s nothing to do but stare into the black.  At his side, he can hear Q’s breath, even and steady, and he tries to pace his own to it, slowing down the rapid tattoo of his heart until it resembles more a man and less a hummingbird.  Each breath is deep and calming as he sucks in air through his mouth and vents it through his nose; the oxygen makes him sleepy, and he almost misses the affectionate nudge of Q’s shoulder on his own.  “Better?” Q asks quietly, and Bond nods, even though he knows Q can’t see him.

::

He wakes to the spill of icy water on his face.

::

He wakes to the distant buzzing of drones passing overhead.

::

He wakes to the stink of his own flesh burning.

::

He wakes to the ache in his lungs and the fire of a broken rib as they try to revive him once more.

::

He wakes to a dark so solid that it rests on his eyelashes like snowflakes.

::

He wakes to frantic hands on his arms, to the feeling of someone pushing on his shoulders, to the sound of frightened breath panting in his ear.  “Bond.  Bond!  Double-oh Seven, stop!  Please stop; please wake up.  You’re safe here!”

Q.  Something sick and dizzy wipes grimy fingers over his jangling nerves as he recognises that voice—it’s Q.  His fingers twitch, try to curl, and he releases the hand clenched in Q’s hair, the fingers locked and knotted around that downy nape.  To his credit, Q doesn’t jerk away, doesn’t press himself against the wall on the other side of the—where are they?  The lift filters back into his memory in ragged chunks for all he still can’t see.  He can’t see; his breath picks up again, and instead of retreating, Q surges forward, presses a soothing palm to his forehead.  It’s nothing like the little cell in Omsk, nothing at all like, but the dark is deep and ephemeral, and just beyond its veil he can see faces he knows are long dead.  Enemy combatants he’s killed himself, allies he’s got killed.  He shudders just once, hard, and instead of pulling away, Q flips his hand, the back of it cool and steady on Bond’s skin.

“Q.”  Bond’s voice is dry, hoarse and cracked and chapped.  Even in the dark, Q knows to telegraph his movements; he pets at Bond’s face before shuffling over to press against his side.

“Better?” Q asks.  He’s quiet, though not in the ginger way of someone afraid.  Q sounds sturdy, sounds solid.  Bond nods, then shakes his head.

“Not really.  I don’t know yet.”

Q seems to appreciate the honesty, humming under his breath.  “Do you often wake up like this?”

“What, pathetic and traumatised?” Bond asks, but the humour falls flat.  He can feel Q’s disapproval radiating through his skin; Q shuffles closer, dropping his head to Bond’s shoulder like an affectionate cat.

“No, you twat.  Frightened, hurt.  Are you often, when you wake?”

The contact is.  Good.  Better than Bond would have imagined at grounding him, at connecting him back to humanity.  He slips an arm around Q’s waist and Q stiffens before sinking into the loose embrace.  “Often?” Bond wonders aloud.  “No.  Not—it doesn’t happen frequently, I’d say.”

“How frequent is infrequent?”  It’s the scratch of Q’s nails on the cotton of his sleeve that keeps the question from sounding clinical, keeps the fine fur of Bond’s ire from rising.

“Perhaps once, twice a month.  Not frequently,” he admits.  Q’s idle petting stops, then resumes.  Bond continues, because he has the impression Q wants him to.  “They’re rarer than they were when I first came back.”

Q is silent at that, though his gentle touch continues.  When he speaks, his voice is quiet, but no less fierce for it.  “If you were one of my creations, I could crack your case, reweld the connections inside, spiff you up again.”

“Are you saying I’m broken, Q?” Bond asks around the shards of glass inside his chest.  Q strokes him anyway.  Bond has to admire his guts.

“I’m saying Mallory’s been indelicate with his weapons.  I don’t put up with that shit from you; I don’t see why he should get away with wrecking things just because he thinks it’s more efficient.  I can’t whip up another you in the lab on a Sunday morning when things are slow.”

It’s.  Q’s protectiveness makes Bond’s chest swell, something warm and bright that, small and tender as it is, fights doggedly against the dark and cold that’s been inside him since Omsk.  It’s not unlike Q himself, brow knit against unpleasantness he can’t change and can’t help raging against.  He surprises himself—surprises them both—with a kiss to the top of Q’s head, and again Q stills before starting again.  This time it’s not wariness, it’s not caution.  It’s surprise.  It’s affection.

“Shield your eyes a moment, Bond,” Q says, and Bond has barely enough time to protect his nightblind eyes before Q’s mobile screen goes white and vivid.  “Do you want to see something neat?”

Bond leans in, and he can smell Q’s aftershave, the scent of his body on his collar, the tea he’d had, perhaps for supper, and spilled on his suede shoes.  Q is warm against him, and when he moves the mobile to show Bond without blinding him, Bond catches a glimpse of the downy, boyish cheeks turned around a sweet smile.  The video loads, then, and Q is watching the screen, rapt and fiddling with the sound.

“—as you can see, today I’ve got myself a drill and a condom—” the young man on the video says, and Bond snorts.

“You’ve saved this to your phone?  What about—?” he asks.  What about the battery? he means, and hours in the dark because Q’s used this vital resource to, what?  Make him feel better?  He opens his mouth to protest.

“Hush,” Q retorts, tipping the screen so Bond can watch.  On the screen, the man is making spacey whooshing sounds with his mouth.  They watch as he and his friend explode spinning condoms filled with coloured water and cackle over the results, and when it’s over, Q pulls up one about paint dancing on a speaker as it throbs with bass.  Then there’s a bullet underwater and cracking a watermelon open with nothing but rubber bands, and by the time he realises he’s drifting off again, he’s already awake, listening as Q murmurs through the emergency radio: “—do you hear me?  Because I swear it, if you ever treat a human being as disposable again—”

“Piss and vinegar,” Bond murmurs, and Q drops off, flushing.  “You don’t have to defend me, you know, Q.”

“Someone does—someone has to take responsibility for you.  Might as well be me; I take care of things that are mine.”  Q’s earnest, eyes heartfelt and warm.  For the first time, Bond registers that the lights have come back.

“Have you stayed with me even though you could get out, just because I was asleep?”  That warm thing from before twists eagerly in Bond’s guts.

“Someone has to take responsibility for you,” Q repeats, but there’s the start of a cherry flush across his cheeks.  “Tanner came in this morning; I walked him through getting the systems operational again and my techs did the necessary repairs.  It hasn’t been long.  I was going to wake you.”

“After you finished reading him the riot act,” Bond agrees, and that flush makes it over the peaks of Q’s cheekbones to spill across the pale plane of his face.  Bond’s kind enough not to tease about it as he pries himself up from the floor with a grunt; Q takes his hand when it’s offered, and Bond helps him to his feet.  He leaves his palm in the small of Q’s back even after stepping out of the lift and onto the blessedly stable marble of the first floor.  There’s an “out of order” sign on the buttons, but it’s early enough that there aren’t people yet—MI6 is a ghost town, pale blue morning outside and hollow echoes in.

“They give you the day off?” Bond asks as he leads Q in the direction of the valet who will take them home to separate beds, him to his empty hotel room and Q to whichever hopelessly hip suburb he’s living in.  Q’s nod is slow, almost already asleep, and the tired moue of his pursed lips splits with a jaw-cracking yawn; Bond realises with a start that Q was probably up the whole time, and he feels.  Unsure—he doesn’t know how he feels.  Not yet, not really.

Q understands.  His blush is gone, replaced with that same sweet smile as before.  “You looked like you needed it.  The sleep.  The company.”

“I did.”  And it’s tempting to ask to sleep with Q again, tempting despite knowing it would be taken the wrong way, tempting despite knowing his own reputation.  He doesn’t, because he can’t bear the thought of being rejected.

“I have a couch you could borrow,” Q offers.  “If you like.”  His smile is sunrise.


End file.
